Nature Medicine

About Nature Medicine

Nature Medicine: Journal Overview

Nature Medicine is a monthly peer-reviewed medical journal published by Springer Nature as part of Nature Portfolio. It covers all areas of medicine and is one of the most influential journals in clinical and translational research. According to the journal's official journal information page, Nature Medicine publishes "original peer-reviewed research in all areas of medicine on the basis of its originality, timeliness, interdisciplinary interest and impact on improving human health," alongside commissioned content — including News, Reviews and Perspectives — that contextualizes the latest advances in translational and clinical research for a wide audience of M.D. and Ph.D. readers (source: nature.com/nm/about, accessed October 2026).

The journal's standing is reflected in its citation metrics. On its official metrics page, Nature Medicine reports a Journal Impact Factor of 52.5 (2025) and a 5-year Journal Impact Factor of 52.5 (2025), together with an immediacy index of 16.7 (2025) — figures that place it among the most-cited journals in medicine (source: nature.com/nm/journal-impact, accessed October 2026). The journal is a signatory-side participant in the research-assessment debate: Springer Nature is a signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), and the metrics page cautions that citation measures such as the 2-year Journal Impact Factor are not necessarily measures of journal quality.

Like other Nature Portfolio research journals, Nature Medicine has no external editorial board. All editorial decisions are made by a team of full-time professional editors with research backgrounds, listed publicly with their areas of coverage (source: nature.com/nm/about/editors). The journal currently runs to Volume 32 (as of the September 2026 issue shown on the journal homepage), having launched in January 1995.

History of Nature Medicine

Nature Medicine was launched in January 1995 to fill what its founders saw as a gap in scientific publishing. The journal's inaugural editorial, published in January 1995 (Nat. Med. 1, 1; 1995), stated that the journal would be "home to papers that bridge the gap between cutting edge biological research and more clinically oriented human investigation" — in current parlance, the home of translational research, a term that was not yet in wide use when the journal launched (sources: "Nature Medicine, reloaded," nature.com/articles/nm0110-1; "Dear author," nature.com/articles/nm0104-1).

The early years of the journal (all dates approximate, drawn from the journal's own retrospectives) reflected the ferment of mid-1990s molecular medicine. Papers in 1995 covered gene therapy for cystic fibrosis, vaccines for cancer or HIV, transplantation of pig organs, purification and expansion of Schwann cells, stimulation of tissue-type plasminogen activator by amyloid-β peptide analogs, and imaging of centrosomes in inseminated oocytes. Many were in vitro or descriptive studies; as research tools improved, the journal's criteria became correspondingly more stringent, and such papers would today generally require supportive proof of extrapolation to human disease and its treatment (source: "Dear author," nature.com/articles/nm0104-1, 2004).

In January 2010, marking its 15th anniversary, the journal published the editorial "Nature Medicine, reloaded," noting that the mission had not changed — publishing the best research and most topical news and commentary on translational medicine — even as the landscape of biomedical research had been transformed by the rise of translational funding, personalized medicine, stem cells, gene therapy, and RNA interference (source: nature.com/articles/nm0110-1). The journal's own Classic Collection retrospective puts it this way: "Since 1995, our journal has been at the forefront of publishing translational medicine, way before the term was even coined" (source: nature.com/collections/gdnvytnwfh).

Three decades on, the journal has broadened from its original bench-to-bedside core to encompass clinical trials, global health, public health, digital medicine, AI in medicine, and health policy — reflected in its current editor coverage areas and in standing editorial series such as the Nature Medicine Commissions, including the Commission on Quality Health Information for All and the Commission on dialysis policy in low- and middle-income countries (source: nature.com/nm, announcements, accessed October 2026).

Leadership and Editorial Team

The current Editor-in-Chief of Nature Medicine is João Monteiro, MD, PhD. He received his medical training at the Federal University in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he also earned his PhD studying mechanisms of tolerance to self-antigens in autoimmune diseases. In 2009 he was named a Pew Latin American Fellow in the Biomedical Sciences and moved to the United States to study T cell antigen recognition and in vivo dynamics of immune responses with Ron Germain at the National Institutes of Health. He served as senior editor for immunology and translational medicine at Cell from 2013 to 2017 and was appointed Chief Editor of Nature Medicine in December 2017, where he leads a team of editors and journalists covering news, opinion and research across translational and clinical research. Since 2021 he has served as a member of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). He is based in New York (source: nature.com/nm/about/editors).

The journal is run entirely by professional editors — there is no external editorial board. The leadership team, as listed on the journal's official editors page (accessed October 2026), includes:

• Deputy Editors: Liam Messin, PhD (London; handles global health, public health, and non-communicable diseases; previously Senior Editor at eBioMedicine and The Lancet Infectious Diseases, and Deputy Editor at The Lancet Global Health; joined Nature Medicine as Deputy Editor in 2024) and Saheli Sadanand, PhD (New York; handles oncology, immunotherapies, rheumatology and human immunology; joined Nature Medicine in 2019 as immunology and immunotherapy editor and became Deputy Editor in 2022).
• Senior Editor, Magazine: Sarah Tomlin, PhD (London; News & Opinion editor; began her editorial career on Nature's News and Views section in 1998 after a PhD on mechanisms of general anaesthesia at Imperial College London; helped launch Nature Materials; joined the Nature Medicine team in 2025).
• Senior Editor, Research Analysis: Karen O'Leary, PhD (London; oversees Reviews, Perspectives, News & Views and Research Highlights; previously at Nature Reviews Cancer; joined Nature Medicine in 2021).
• Senior Editors, Research: Michael Basson, PhD (New York; cardiovascular diseases, precision medicine & big data, bioengineering & biotechnology; at the journal since 2003), Ashley Castellanos-Jankiewicz, PhD (New York; metabolism and women's health; joined 2025), Ulrike Harjes, PhD (Berlin; cancer and immunology; joined 2022), Anna Ranzoni, PhD (London; genetics, genomics, cell therapy and gene therapy; joined 2020), Jerome Staal, PhD (New York; neurology, psychiatry and regenerative medicine including stem cells; joined 2020), and Ming Yang, PhD (London; non-communicable diseases and public health; joined 2022).
• Associate Editors, Research: Junlin Hou, PhD (Shanghai; AI, wearables, medical devices and digital medicine; joined 2026) and Lia Parkin, PhD (New York; infectious disease and microbiome; joined 2024).

Because editorial decisions are made in-house, prospective authors can direct presubmission enquiries to the editor covering their area — the journal explicitly offers presubmission enquiries as part of its submission guidelines (source: nature.com/nm/for-authors).

Aims & Scope

According to the journal's official journal information page, Nature Medicine publishes original peer-reviewed research "in all areas of medicine" — selected on the basis of originality, timeliness, interdisciplinary interest and impact on improving human health — together with commissioned News, Reviews and Perspectives that contextualize the latest advances in translational and clinical research for M.D. and Ph.D. readers (source: nature.com/nm/about).

A 2004 editorial from the journal's editors ("Dear author") spells out the practical publication bar: to be well suited to Nature Medicine, a manuscript should "demonstrate novel insight into disease processes, with direct evidence of the physiological relevance of the results." In general this means validating in vitro findings in animal models of disease or in data from human clinical samples, and showing the relevance of the animal disease model to its human counterpart (source: nature.com/articles/nm0104-1). While wording evolves, the core has been constant since the 1995 launch: basic and preclinical work is welcome when it has direct relevance to human disease — the journal's self-described niche as the "Home of Translational Research" (source: nature.com/collections/gdnvytnwfh).

Current coverage spans the full translational and clinical spectrum, reflected in the editors' portfolios: oncology, immunology and immunotherapy, cardiovascular disease, neuroscience and psychiatry, infectious diseases and microbiome, metabolism, genetics and genomics, cell and gene therapy, precision medicine and big data, bioengineering and biotechnology, digital medicine and AI, wearables and medical devices, global and public health, non-communicable diseases, women's health, and regenerative medicine (source: nature.com/nm/about/editors).

Editorial Process and Peer Review

Nature Medicine follows the Nature Portfolio editorial workflow, details of which are signposted from the journal's submission guidelines page (nature.com/nm/for-authors). Key elements:

1. Initial editorial assessment. All submissions are read by the professional editors; the journal emphasizes checking that Nature Medicine is the most suitable journal and that the content type is one it accepts. Papers judged unlikely to meet the journal's criteria are declined promptly without external review — standard practice at highly selective journals.
2. External peer review. Manuscripts of potential interest are sent for formal peer review by expert referees. The journal offers authors the option of double-anonymized peer review (requirements linked from the submission guidelines), and authors sent out for review are asked to read and sign the editorial policies.
3. Editorial decision. Editors weigh referees' advice and decide among acceptance, revision, or rejection. The journal maintains formal routes for appeals and transfers, including transfer to sister Nature Portfolio journals.
4. Acceptance and production. On acceptance in principle, authors follow formatting guidelines; corresponding authors are asked to link their ORCID to the manuscript tracking account before final acceptance, after which the article goes to production.

Speed. The journal publishes its own turnaround metrics: the median time from submission to first editorial decision is 4 days, and the median time from submission to acceptance is 117 days (source: nature.com/nm/journal-impact, 2025 figures).

Presubmission enquiries and preprints. The journal accepts presubmission enquiries so authors can check a manuscript's likely fit, and maintains a dedicated preprint policy linked from its submission guidelines (source: nature.com/nm/for-authors).

Impact and Metrics

The following metrics are published on Nature Medicine's official journal metrics page (nature.com/nm/journal-impact, accessed October 2026). Years refer to the metric year as displayed by the journal.

A secondary source (Wikipedia, citing Journal Citation Reports) lists Nature Medicine's 2025 impact factor of 52.5 as ranking it 1st out of 259 journals in the category "Biochemistry & Molecular Biology" — readers should check the current Journal Citation Reports for the latest category rankings, as these change annually (source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_Medicine, accessed October 2026; secondary source — verify against JCR).

Consistent with DORA, the journal's metrics page notes that citation measures such as the 2-year Journal Impact Factor are not necessarily measures of journal quality, and encourages authors and readers to consider a range of metrics (source: nature.com/nm/journal-impact).

Submission Guidelines

Nature Medicine's submission guidelines (nature.com/nm/for-authors) walk authors through five stages. The key points from the official guidance:

• Before initial submission: confirm Nature Medicine is the most suitable journal (aims and scope); confirm the content type is accepted (content types page); read the editorial policies; understand the publishing models and costs; consider a presubmission enquiry; check the preprint policy.
• Preparing the manuscript: ensure the submission is complete; follow the initial formatting requirements; ensure accuracy and readability (writing and language guidance); decide whether to participate in double-anonymized peer review.
• Submission portal: manuscripts are submitted through the journal's online submission system at mts-nmed.nature.com (linked as "Submit manuscript" from the guidelines page). Authors log in or register an account, upload the required files, and can track manuscript status after submission.
• Article types: the journal publishes primary research Articles alongside commissioned and magazine content — including Reviews, Perspectives, News & Views, Analysis, News Features, News, and Editorials — as shown on the journal homepage and its content-types documentation (sources: nature.com/nm; nature.com/nm/for-authors).
• After submission: the manuscript goes through the editorial process; if sent for peer review, authors are asked to read and sign the editorial policies. Decisions can be appealed, and submissions can be transferred to other journals.
• On acceptance: accepted-in-principle articles follow the journal's formatting guidelines; corresponding authors link their ORCID to the manuscript tracking account before formal acceptance; the article then goes to production.

The journal also maintains Clinical Research Guidelines for authors of clinical studies (linked from the journal information page), and its editors have championed raising ethical standards and transparency in the reporting of translational and clinical research (sources: nature.com/nm/about; editor biography of João Monteiro).

Open Access and APC

Nature Medicine offers authors of primary research articles two publishing routes, set out on its official publishing-options page (source: nature.com/nm/submission-guidelines/publishing-options, accessed October 2026):

1. Traditional subscription model — the article is assessed, peer reviewed and, if successful, published and made available to subscribing institutions and individuals or to readers who pay for the specific article.
2. Gold open access — the same publishing process, except that on acceptance the author(s) or funder(s) pay an Article Processing Charge (APC), and the final version of record is free for everyone to read, published under a Creative Commons licence.

The APC for gold open access in Nature Medicine, as stated on that page, is £9,390.00 / $12,850.00 / €10,850.00. The page notes that non-primary research articles (e.g., Reviews, Comments, News & Views) should not include original unpublished research findings and are not eligible for gold open access — they can only be published via the traditional subscription route.

APC figures change over time and are subject to VAT or local taxes where applicable, so prospective authors should verify the current charges on the journal's official publishing-options page before relying on any number. Springer Nature also offers institutional open access agreements that can cover publishing costs, plus APC waiver and discount policies for authors in qualifying circumstances — details are on the publisher's open access funding and support pages.

Landmark Discoveries Published in Nature Medicine

Nature Medicine's own "Classic Collection" content sampler (nature.com/collections/gdnvytnwfh) — assembled by the journal to show why it is the "Home of Translational Research" — highlights landmark articles from its first 15 years, organized by therapeutic area. Among them:

• Bcr-Abl inhibition — the road to Gleevec (imatinib). Brian J. Druker and colleagues reported that a selective inhibitor of the Abl tyrosine kinase suppressed the growth of Bcr-Abl–positive leukemia cells (Nature Medicine 2, 561–566; 1996) — described by the journal as "proof of principle that Bcr-Abl could be targeted in leukemia cells, a crucial finding that led to the development of Gleevec." A decade later, the journal also published the first study raising the issue of cardiotoxicity of clinically relevant protein kinase inhibitors, using imatinib as the example (Kerkelä et al., Nature Medicine 12, 908–916; 2006).
• Cystic fibrosis and premature stop mutations. Howard, Frizzell & Bedwell showed that aminoglycoside antibiotics restore CFTR function by overcoming premature stop mutations (Nature Medicine 2, 467–469; 1996) — the first demonstration of codon skipping by antibiotics, now described by the journal as a mainstream idea.
• Cancer stem cells. Bonnet & Dick showed that human acute myeloid leukemia is organized as a hierarchy originating from a primitive hematopoietic cell (Nature Medicine 3, 730–737; 1997) — described by the journal as the discovery of cancer stem cells, several years before they were found in solid tumors.
• Celiac disease autoantigen. Dieterich et al. identified tissue transglutaminase as the autoantigen of celiac disease (Nature Medicine 3, 797–801; 1997).
• Adult human neurogenesis. Eriksson et al. reported neurogenesis in the adult human hippocampus (Nature Medicine 4, 1313–1317; 1998) — the first evidence of the birth of new neurons in the human brain.
• Nitrite–nitric oxide physiology. Cosby et al. showed that nitrite reduction to nitric oxide by deoxyhemoglobin vasodilates the human circulation (Nature Medicine 9, 1498–1505; 2003) — described by the journal as an important paper in changing views about nitric oxide function.

The sampler also groups later standouts by area — including Hedgehog-pathway and primary-cilia studies in basal cell carcinoma and medulloblastoma, luminal-progenitor origins of BRCA1-associated breast tumors, and EWS-FLI1–targeted small molecules in Ewing's sarcoma (Cancer); endogenous VEGFR-2 splice variants inhibiting lymphatic vessel growth, cyclophilin A in aortic aneurysm formation, and shear-gradient platelet aggregation mechanisms (Cardiovascular Disease); alefacept-based co-stimulation blockade in primate transplantation, tenascin-C as a TLR4 activator in arthritis, and neutrophil extracellular traps in vasculitis (Immunology); and neutralizing-antibody protection against mucosal SHIV challenge in macaques (Infectious Diseases) — all published in Nature Medicine 15 (2009).

More recent highlights on the journal's pages include translational cancer trials (such as englumafusp alfa plus glofitamab in B cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma), feasibility work on delivering psilocybin-assisted therapy for treatment-resistant depression within the UK health service, and the MedGemma open medical vision-language model collection (source: nature.com/nm homepage, October 2026) — illustrating the journal's continued reach from molecular mechanism to clinical implementation.

The Nature Portfolio Family

Nature Medicine is part of Nature Portfolio, Springer Nature's family of journals, which includes the flagship Nature, the multidisciplinary open-access Nature Communications, the Communications series, the Nature Reviews titles, and discipline-specific Nature-branded research journals. Manuscripts declined by one Portfolio journal can often be transferred to a sister journal with reviewer reports carried over — a workflow signposted in Nature Medicine's own submission guidelines under "Appeals and Transfers" (source: nature.com/nm/for-authors).

The portfolio structure also shapes editorial strategy across the family: specialist sister journals (such as Nature Genetics, Nature Cancer, Nature Cardiovascular Research, Nature Neuroscience and others) serve excellent work of narrower scope, while Nature Medicine reserves its pages for translational and clinical findings with broad impact on human health. The journal also runs Nature Medicine Commissions — major multi-article reports on pressing health topics, such as the Commission on Quality Health Information for All and the Commission on dialysis policy in low- and middle-income countries (source: nature.com/nm, accessed October 2026).

Key Facts

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Nature Medicine?

Nature Medicine is a monthly peer-reviewed medical journal published by Springer Nature (Nature Portfolio). It publishes original research across all areas of medicine on the basis of originality, timeliness, interdisciplinary interest and impact on improving human health, plus commissioned News, Reviews and Perspectives aimed at M.D. and Ph.D. readers (source: nature.com/nm/about).

When was Nature Medicine founded?

Nature Medicine was launched in January 1995. Its inaugural editorial (Nat. Med. 1, 1; 1995) defined it as home to papers bridging cutting-edge biological research and clinically oriented human investigation — essentially translational research before the term was coined (sources: nature.com/articles/nm0110-1; nature.com/articles/nm0104-1).

What is Nature Medicine's impact factor?

According to the journal's official metrics page, Nature Medicine's Journal Impact Factor is 52.5 (2025), with a 5-year Impact Factor of 52.5 (2025). A secondary source (Wikipedia, citing Journal Citation Reports) lists it as ranking 1st out of 259 journals in the "Biochemistry & Molecular Biology" category — verify the latest category rankings against JCR, as they change annually.

Who is the Editor-in-Chief of Nature Medicine?

João Monteiro, MD, PhD, has been Chief Editor since December 2017. He trained in medicine at the Federal University in Rio de Janeiro, was a Pew Latin American Fellow at the NIH, and served as senior editor for immunology and translational medicine at Cell (2013–2017). He has been a member of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) since 2021 (source: nature.com/nm/about/editors).

Does Nature Medicine have an editorial board?

No. As with other Nature Portfolio research journals, there is no external editorial board — all editorial decisions are made by a team of full-time professional editors, whose names, backgrounds and coverage areas are published on the journal's website (source: nature.com/nm/about/editors).

What is Nature Medicine's acceptance rate?

Nature Medicine does not publish an official acceptance rate on its journal pages. Any acceptance-rate figure found on third-party sites is not from the journal and should not be treated as official. The journal is, however, highly selective: editors screen all submissions and decline many without external review, and the journal's bar is novel insight into disease processes with direct evidence of physiological relevance (source: nature.com/nm/for-authors; nature.com/articles/nm0104-1).

How long does peer review take at Nature Medicine?

The journal's official speed metrics (2025) report a median of 4 days from submission to first editorial decision and 117 days from submission to acceptance (source: nature.com/nm/journal-impact).

How much does it cost to publish open access in Nature Medicine?

The gold open access APC for primary research articles in Nature Medicine is listed as £9,390.00 / $12,850.00 / €10,850.00 on the journal's official publishing-options page. Reviews, Comments and News & Views are not eligible for gold open access. Charges change over time, so always verify the current figures on the official page (source: nature.com/nm/submission-guidelines/publishing-options).

Can I post a preprint before submitting to Nature Medicine?

The journal maintains a dedicated preprint policy, linked from its submission guidelines page — authors should check that policy for the current terms before submitting (source: nature.com/nm/for-authors).

Does Nature Medicine accept presubmission enquiries?

Yes. Presubmission enquiries are part of the journal's submission guidelines, so authors can check whether a manuscript is likely to be a good fit before a full submission (source: nature.com/nm/for-authors).

What types of articles does Nature Medicine publish?

Primary research Articles, plus commissioned and magazine content including Review Articles, Perspectives, Analysis pieces, News & Views, News Features, News, and Editorials — as shown on the journal homepage and its content-types documentation (sources: nature.com/nm; nature.com/nm/for-authors).

What landmark papers has Nature Medicine published?

Among the papers the journal itself highlights in its Classic Collection: Druker et al. (1996) on the Bcr-Abl inhibitor that led to Gleevec (imatinib); Howard et al. (1996) on aminoglycosides restoring CFTR function; Bonnet & Dick (1997) on cancer stem cells in leukemia; Dieterich et al. (1997) identifying tissue transglutaminase as the celiac disease autoantigen; and Eriksson et al. (1998) reporting adult human hippocampal neurogenesis (source: nature.com/collections/gdnvytnwfh).

Where do I submit to Nature Medicine?

Manuscripts are submitted through the journal's online submission system at mts-nmed.nature.com, reached via the "Submit manuscript" link on the journal's submission guidelines page (source: nature.com/nm/for-authors).

Profile compiled October 2026 from official Nature Medicine and Springer Nature sources listed in the accompanying sources file. Metrics, APCs, editorial personnel and policies change over time — always verify current figures on the journal's official pages before citing or acting on them.